What is it about?

Literature reviews tell people what the scientific literature says about a topic. Systematic reviews are a type of literature review that follows agreed-upon rules to minimize bias and faulty conclusions. The rules also ensure that other researchers can re-run the review to see if they find the same results. This paper is our recommendations for running a systematic review to figure out whether mindful walking improves mental and heart health. Mindful walking is walking while cultivating an accepting, non-judgmental, and moment-to-moment awareness of one's thoughts, emotions, feelings, bodily sensations, and environment.

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Why is it important?

This paper is unique because it presents the methods of the first systematic review on mindful walking. Mindful walking is an understudied mind-body activity that may improve health more than normal walking.

Perspectives

I hope that this paper shows people that my lab group and I care about conducting research well. Our salaries are paid by taxpayers, so we owe it to those people to use our time wisely and do valid research that does not introduce false narratives into the scientific literature. Ultimately, we are seeking to understand if mindful walking improves health. Our work may reveal that mindful walking can improve mental and heart health. We are excited about the future of our research, in which we will study whether mindful walking helps undergraduate students with their mental health. This group has a great need for mental health resources because they experience stress, anxiety, and depression more than any other group in the United States.

Dustin Davis
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: A protocol and novel tool for systematically reviewing the effects of mindful walking on mental and cardiovascular health, PLoS ONE, October 2021, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0258424.
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